Believe it or not, even if your back yard is no bigger than a queen-size mattress (about 30 square feet), you can produce 200 pounds of homegrown meat every year…by raising rabbits! For the urban gardener or homesteader, domestic rabbits can be valuable livestock. Its flavor is often compared to chicken, and – like barnyard fowl rabbit is good fried, baked, stewed, cooked in casseroles, and prepared in many other ways. Rabbit meat is an excellent source of protein; the pelts can be used in numerous applications including hats, collars, mittens, lap robes, cushion covers, vests and coats; and rabbit manure is an excellent fertility source.

“Thumper pellets” have more nitrogen and phosphorous than does horse, cow, or pig manure…but won’t burn plants, as chicken droppings will. You could also set up a ground level bin or old wheel barrel under your elevated rabbit hutches and start a worm farm in the collected droppings. If you want to water houseplants or tender seedlings, make a manure tea using a quart or more of rabbit droppings soaked in five galls of water for a day or two, stir a few times, strain into your watering can and what those berry bushes grow!

Under the National Organic Program, organic livestock production is a management system that respects the animal’s health and well being and provides housing and feed most closely resembling the natural environment.

We first considered breed and breed stock in establishing the rabbit herd. As our production rabbits are bred for both pelts and meat, we chose New Zealand and American Chinchilla into the breed line. The New Zealand rabbits grow to a good slaughter weight in a relatively short time. Visit the breeder before you purchase livestock, and isolate a new rabbit for at least a week before introducing it to the herd.Housing rabbits is critical and must take into consideration the life cycle of the rabbit. In our production system, we figure that it takes about four months from breeding date to slaughter date, a useful calculation when determine when to breed and how many litters for each season. It’s a good idea to replace brood does when they reach 3 years of age with your own stock and replace bucks with a new blood line.

A doe should be at least 6-8 months and a buck 6-7 months old before mating. For best results, we take the doe to the buck’s hutch for breeding as they tend to be territorial, twice, once early in the day and then later in the evening. Fertilization takes place 8 to 10 hours after mating. The normal gestation period for rabbits is 28-32 days. About five days before deliver, clean the hutch thoroughly, put a wooden nest box in the back of the hutch and fill with plenty of clean hay. Right before kindling (giving birth), the doe pulls fur from her chest, shoulders and sides to line the nest with the hay.

Once the doe kindles, check to see that the kits are covered, but do not disturb the doe for at least 24 hours. They can be extremely protective and some may abandon kits that were handled too soon after birth. About 36 hours after kindling, give the doe a small treat in the front of the hutch, count and check the kits and remove any dead ones. The kits should be check daily. Sometimes a kit will stay on the doe when she’s finished nursing and end up on the wire. These kits should be returned to the nest box.

A clean water supply is essential at all times. Consumption will vary according to the type of feed and climate conditions and increases when the doe is lactating. A lactating doe will eat up to 3 times her normal rations. They have small stomachs, which are emptied into very long intestines only as new food enters. This is why rabbits consume only small quantities at a time and must be fed regularly to avoid digestive upsets.

Baby rabbits will usually open their eyes around 12-14 days old. They will start venturing out of the nest box and begin to nibble on food. It may be necessary to increase the doe’s rations. Around 5 weeks, the kits and doe are ready for larger quarters. After the kits reach 6 weeks of age, the doe may be rebred and returned to her hutch. Around 8 weeks, the fryers have reached a size to separate into pens with no more than three animals per pen.

Our rabbits are fed organic timothy hay, small rations of grain, and daily handfuls of pasture-type materials, such as grass, dandelions, carrot tops, root vegetables, apples, sunflower and pumpkin seeds or cornstalks. Be sure to introduce new foods slowly to rabbits as they can become piggy and eat too much, resulting in diarrhea and death. In winter, our rabbits are content to nibble on free choice hay, vegetable scraps such as carrots, parsnips, rutabagas. Organic rabbit production is ideal for our homesteading needs.

Once the fryers have reached about 3 months of age and around 5 pounds, they will either need to be sexed and separated or slaughtered. In our production system, we move fryers to the freezer and the latest batch of kits to nursery pens. Non producing does and mean rabbits are culled from the herd.

After twelve weeks comes the hardest part of preparing your rabbits for the table, and could be the turning point for some people to become vegetarians. This is a time to honor and give thanks and appreciation to the rabbit for sustain our needs. The first step is to render the rabbit unconscious quickly to prevent suffering and struggling. The two methods generally employed are either stunning or dislocating its neck. The first way is probably best for the novice.

After skinning the rabbit, removing the entrails, rinse the carcass in cold water to remove any hair and blood and refrigerate for 10-12 hours before cutting up. You won’t need to throw out your rabbits’ innards, either. You can slice the kidneys in half, deep-fry segments, and serve them as hors d’oeuvres. Rabbit liver and heart can be cooked and chopped into a tasty sandwich spread, or fried with mushrooms and bacon. Even the offal from your butchered fryers can be utilized…as a tasty treat for dogs or pigs. All work in connection with rabbit carcasses should be done in a hygienic and sanitary manner.

Sanitation of hutches, pens, feeders and water bottles is critical to successful rabbit husbandry. Organic producers must use an approved product for sanitizing. We use a hydrogen peroxide and peroxyacetic acid product marketed as Sanidate (Green Cleaning BioSafe) or Oxidate.

Rabbits kept in dirty conditions are susceptible to coccidiosis, a highly contagious and deadly disease. We clean our hutches weekly and sanitize before new rabbits are boarded in them. Rabbits kept in clean conditions have relatively few health issues. Once the production season is over, prepare the Rabbitry for winter. Pens and nest boxes are cleaned, organic hay and organic pellets are stored in the barn.

Four does and one buck will provide a family with plenty of meat to last the year. Before you get started, you should know just how much food you can expect to get. A good doe will yield four or five litters – with six to nine kits a batch – per year. Each of the young animals should reach a weight of 4 to 4 ½ pounds at eight to ten weeks. Therefore, a single doe can contribute 60 pounds – or more- of meat for your larder in one year. That ain’t a bad output from on 10-12 pound animal. Here’s a tasty recipe you might enjoy. We do have recipe books available for purchase. Bon appetite